Wired’s Weekly Picks of Stunning Architecture

Einstein Tower, Potsdam, Germany

The 1920s-era Einstein Tower was built to prove one of general relativity's predictions -- that gravity would cause a shift in the sun's spectrum. Although it never succeeded, it was one of Germany's most important observatories for many years, up until its partial destruction during WWII. A fan of Einstein, architect Erich Mendelsohn molded concrete into graceful curves to evoke Einstein's theories. Located at the Astrophysikalisches Institut Potsdam, the observatory is still in use as a solar observatory, though it splits time as a tourist attraction as well. The tower is skewered by a 1.5-meter solar telescope that visualizes solar magnetic fields and their location within sunspots.

Mohegan Sun Casino, Uncasville, Connecticut

When designing the Mohegan Sun, Kohn Pedersen Fox associates tried to stay as true to the identity of the eponymous Native American tribe as possible, incorporating elements from the surrounding terrain and the tribe's history. It was built with a mirrored exterior to reflect the sky, sun, and trees, and the recalls Mohegan quartz arrowheads. The massive resort -- 5.5 million square feet -- contains opulent features from a giant ballroom to a 55-foot indoor waterfall, and even an arena for the local WNBA team, the Connecticut Sun. And like any casino worth its chips, the Sun brings in aging rockers like Megadeth, Styx, and REO Speedwagon. It's not just that you can gamble away your pennies at a resort tucked in a riverside woodland; the 34-story hotel tower juts out of the landscape like a crystal mountain. But casinos tend to want people to stay in the gambling halls, so conveniently, it also has a smaller, three-story crystal mountain on the inside.

RMIT Design Hub, Melbourne

The facade on RMIT (formerly known as the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) University's Design Hub is made of 16,000 glass cells, like frosted lenses, some of which rotate sideways to make an adaptable cooling shade. The cells can be easily replaced, making it possible to use them for evaporative cooling or photovoltaic experiments. It's the most prominent of many features Sean Godsell Architects incorporated in the 2012 building to make it efficient and sustainable.

While lots of tech in the built environment is of that bent, the ultimate goal of the building is to feature design on the inside and outside: it houses RMIT's Design Research Institute and School of Architecture and Design. And, like the building itself, the facade is built both to shade the building and for research: "I argued right from the start that the building be its own laboratory, constantly testing new ideas," Godsell, an RMIT graduate, has said.

The Met, Bangkok

Completed in 2009, Bangkok's 66-story Met Tower is an attempt to build an apartment complex uniquely suited to its surroundings, rather than adapting temperate techniques to a tropical location. WOHA Architects did this by incorporating elements of more traditional tropical housing, and the results have been shortlisted for Aga Khan's 2013 Award for Architecture. The perforated 748-foot structure is actually six columns connected by breezeways that promote cross ventilation -- each unit is exposed on all four sides. The facade is inspired by traditional Thai architecture and materials, with shade and vegetation screens reaching all the way to the top.

Photo: Aga Khan Award for Architecture/Patrick Bingham-Hall

AT&T Long Lines Building, New York

The Russians aren't the only ones that can design brutalist concrete buildings; architect John Carl Warnecke did a pretty good job with AT&T's phone-switching facility at 33 Thomas Street in New York. The granite-faced behemoth is called the Long Lines Building because its face is unbroken by windows, to keep the equipment secure and protected. Its 29 stories rise to 550 feet thanks to 18-foot ceilings, built tall to house the long-distance and international switches and exchanges. What it lacks in traditional attractiveness, the 1974 creation makes up in sheer imposition and impressiveness — it's designed to be bombproof and self-sufficient for up to two weeks in case of a disaster.

Geisel Library, San Diego

It's just a little strange that Theodor "Doctor Seuss" Geisel is the namesake of this UC-San Diego library; the architecture is far from Seussian. Instead of the wobbly, colorful buildings found in the good doctor's stories, Geisel Library is dominated by mirrors, concrete, and straight edges. The building, which opened in 1970, mushrooms up over campus, with its 16 concrete buttresses supporting the cantilevered upper floors. After Geisel died in 1991, his wife donated money and a collection of Geisel's work, noting how much he loved the library, which was subsequently renamed in his honor. So although architect William Pereira wasn't influenced by Dr. Seuss, it seems Dr. Seuss was inspired by Pereira.

Aqua Tower, Chicago

Reflective glass makes a beautiful facade, but it can be deadly for birds, which often can't tell the glass from the sky or trees it reflects. Studio Gang Architects designed their Aqua Tower with that in mind: the undulating concrete terraces not only provide balcony space for residents, but help restrict the angle the reflections can be seen from. Railings and glass made with a small amount of ceramic in it help break the reflections up further, making the 859-foot tower, completed in 2010, exemplary for bird safety, according to both the American Bird Conservancy and PETA. But it's not just about the birds. The swells and flares, based on striated limestone formations, also shade apartments from the sun and help protect against wind, all while maintaining a square footprint.

Parkview Square, Singapore

The architecture blogs describe Parkview Square as "Art Deco," but we know what it really is: a steampunk paradise. At 472 feet tall, the architects could afford to build it from brown brick and outfit it with decorative sculptures and elaborate bronze grates. Its design is specifically "imposing and monumental, yet stylish and elegant," according to then-chairman of the Chyau Fwu Group, the building's developer. The office building, completed in 2002, also houses the embassies of Austria, Mongolia, and the United Arab Emirates, and it's suitably lavish, with ornate ceilings and gold trim.

F&F Tower, Panama City, Panama

Named for its developer, F&F Properties, but perhaps better known as the Revolution Tower, the floors of this 797-foot landmark in Panama City's banking district rotate a few degrees each around a central column. Designed as an office building and completed in 2011, architects Pinzon Lozano and Associates have been criticized for the building's five elevators, which some think won't be enough to efficiently shuttle occupants to the building's 52 floors. Architecture site Emporis named the helical concrete and glass structure one of its award-winning skyscrapers for 2011.

Shanghai World Financial Center

Growth in Pudong's Lujiazui district in Shanghai has exploded in the last 20 years, topped (for now) by the Shanghai World Financial Center, Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates' tower that rises 1,614 feet above one of the fastest-growing areas in one of the world's fastest growing countries. The second-tallest building in the world when finished in 2008, it won that year's best skyscraper award from the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. (It currently holds fourth place amongst tallest buildings.)

The building is often compared to a bottle opener -- it's so similar that the souvenir shop actually sells bottle openers shaped like it -- but KPF designed it to represent a portal between heaven and Earth, and seated an observation deck in the trapezoidal space. But it's more than just pretty; the multi-use building transitions from four sides to six as it rises, using diagonal braces and outrigger trusses connected to a central core to reduce weight. A side effect is that it seems to narrow as it ascends, fading into the sky.

Photos: Courtesy of Mori Building/Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates

Giant Interactive Group Campus, Shanghai

It's only appropriate that the headquarters for Chinese gaming company Giant Interactive Group looks a little like something you'd find in a video game. But, in what must be a nod to making it somewhere people actually want to work, Morphosis Architects made the sculpted landscape that encompasses the building a little more green and — depending on your involvement in office politics — free of foes.

Completed in 2010, the building tries to use the landscape as a tool rather than a substrate. The angular building houses equally angular halls devoted to a range of functions, from swimming pool and tennis courts to a library and auditorium, as well as offices. A low green roof covers part of the structure, while a cantilevered wing extends over a man-made lake, and the entire structure is, like so many good role-playing games, intentionally labyrinthine. It encourages "chance encounters," notes Morphosis, though it doesn't say whether you'll run into any skulltulas.

Turning Torso, Malmö, Sweden

Sweden hasn't set a particularly high bar for "tallest skyscraper." But, despite being the tallest building in the Nordic countries, Malmö's HSB Turning Torso isn't interesting for its 623-foot height — it's the nine twisting blocks, stacked atop each other, that help make the building an icon.

Primarily residential, Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava designed the tower to mimic both a house and a twisting human body. From bottom to top, the floors vary by 90 degrees, which is more sculptural than functional. Its construction does incorporate practical elements, however, including a steel exoskeleton built onto the building's surface that dampens vibrations and acts as a windbreak.

Cited as a new symbol for the town's 300,000 residents when completed in 2005, the tower can be seen from across the Öresund strait in neighboring Denmark..

New York by Gehry, New York City

Pritzker Prize-winning architect Frank Gehry went residential for the first time on his tower at 8 Spruce Street, completed in 2011 just outside the financial district in New York City. The tallest apartment building in the western hemisphere (for now) at 870 feet, the New York by Gehry incorporates the architect's iconic curved steel exterior, rippling and reflective, like a wave in the sky.

In addition to pricey apartments — upwards of $40,000 a month for penthouses — the bottom floors of the tower houses a public school. The building's design is meant to make residents feel they could step right out into space, and from afar, the wavy metal has the same effect on the eyes.

Top photo: Courtesy of Gehry Partners, LLP

Bottom photo: dbox

Wageningen Campus, Atlas Building, Netherlands

Like a big, square, beetle, Wageningen University's Atlas Building is primarily supported by its exoskeleton. The concrete latticework reduces the need for pillars on the inside, and the building contains a large, open atrium with footbridges between floors. Completed in 2007, Atlas was also built with convertible labs, so it can be reconfigured internally as its occupants' needs change. Designed by Rafael Vinolly Architects and OeverZaaijer Architecture and Urbanism, the building houses Wageningen's Water and Climate Center, Soil Group, and Environmental Sciences Group. as well as a massive, hanging globe of the Earth, fittingly.

Mikimoto Building, Tokyo

The pink, spontaneous exterior of Toyo Ito's Mikimoto Building in Tokyo is a spontaneous-seeming design that hides a complicated structural scheme. The windows, laid out to look like random chunks were cut from the building, belie the atypical structure; because some windows curl around the building's corners, there are no supporting columns where there should be. To keep the inside open, Ito used steel plates, filled with concrete and welded together for the walls. The resulting structure, nine stories high with a narrow 2,500-square-foot footprint, was completed in 2005 as headquarters for Mikimoto Pearl company.

Bank of Georgia (nee Soviet Ministry of Roads), Tbilisi, Georgia

The Soviets were not known for comfortable or ornamental architecture, and the Bank of Georgia headquarters is neither of those. But despite being a series of massive, stacked concrete blocks (or perhaps, because of that), it is an interesting adaptation of its period's stark, square style.

Built in 1975 as the Soviet Ministry of Roads and sold to the bank in 2007, the Tetris-like structure is actually 18 stories high and 44,000 square feet. Like many examples of constructivist architecture, its blocky, three-dimensional form is almost a variation on an industrial bunker, but re-imagined to allow a forest to grow underneath. Giorgi Chakhava was in the envious position of being both minister of highway construction and architect, and with Zurab Jalaghania, he was able to both follow and expand beyond typical Soviet brutalism.

Marin County Civic Center, San Rafael, California

Frank Lloyd Wright buildings are often tucked subtly into their landscape. The Marin County Civic Center, though, is harder to hide. But in spite of the bright blue roof and long, obtuse-angled design, it's still not one of his better known buildings. (Though it has offered inspiration to pop culture figures from George Lucas (PDF) to Dr. Dre.)

Started in 1960 — the year after Wright's death — the Civic Center, like Wright's other creations, integrates architecture into the landscape. Now a National Historic Landmark, the center consists mainly of two long halls (880 feet and 580 feet) connected by a rotunda with a tall gold spire. It was the famous architect's last and largest project.

The Shard, London

Pritzker prize-winning architect Renzo Piano designed The Shard as an irregular pyramid with a glass exterior, evoking a shard of glass. At 1,016 feet, it's the tallest building in the European Union, about the height of the New York Times Building (also designed by Piano). But The Shard is more than just a pretty facade — it's urban planning embodied in architecture. Opened in July, 2012, it houses offices, apartments, restaurants, and a 5-star hotel. The concept, developed by Sellar Property, was to integrate a "vertical city" into the node of London's transportation system, located in the London Bridge district nearly on top of the busy train terminal there. The Shard was named as a finalist for Design Museum's Architecture of the Year 2012, and The View from The Shard will open the 68th through 72nd floors to tourists starting in February.

GT Tower, Seoul

In addition to a dance fad, Seoul's Gangnam district is responsible for some interesting architecture, not least Consort Architects' wavy Garak Tower East, completed in 2011. There's no GT West, yet, but the 31-story East tower was designed to recall the form of traditional Korean pottery. The shape isn't just trippy; the way the facade is aligned helps allow natural light to reach deep inside the building.

Photo: Courtesy of Consort Architects

CCTV Tower, Beijing

The 768-foot-tall CCTV building became the new headquarters for China Central Television — the government-run television network — when it was completed in 2009. Architects from OMA designed its rough donut shape as a three-dimensional alternative to traditional skyscrapers, as though two had bent at 90-degree angles to meet in the middle. A grid of tubes, designed by engineering firm Arup and visible on the exterior, help brace the 75-meter cantilever.